Wisdom Woes

I am not sure whether my husband and I are just fussier than most and as a result have unrealistic expectations of the quality of our build. Everytime a stage is completed during the build we get all excited and hope that this time it will be done without any stress causing issues. Then we are always brought back down to earth with a thud and are left speechless at the carelessness of the tradies when performing their work.

Our upper bricks were cleaned  last week and there appears to be not only some damage from the cleaning process, but also some poor quality mortar. We can see daylight from the inside of the house when looking at some of the brick walls because the mortar has shrunk so much it is not even attached to the brick any more. There are also lots of cracks in the mortar. We got to have a look and film the problem areas before the scaffolding came down. After reading the BCA section on mortar we are pretty sure we have sections that are defective. We have our private appraiser doing a pre-internal linings check on the 16th so we will get him to do a mortar test as well. Another thing to add to the ever growing list of fixes required.

We also got told last week that we could not have the feature steps that we signed off on and paid for, because they will not fit in our entrance way since we have the wider front door. The door will not be able to open if we have the feature platform step as on display in the Impression at Gregory Hills. So I have had to settle for a normal width but wrap around bottom step instead. Disappointing, but I don't see it as a major problem when we still have some structural issues unresolved with the frame. Come on Wisdom get your act together!

Facade with cleaned upper bricks

Mortar damage top of front pillars

Mortar damage in wall

Can see light through mortar from inside of house. This occurs in lot places. 

Cracked mortar in window sill

Chip  in mortar

More chips and shrinkage

Stacker door not sitting straight in frame causing big gap at the top.

Flooding down side of the house. This has been permanently like this since the plumber laid the pipes, despite no rain for weeks. It is about 1 foot deep but at it's worst was almost to the top of the slab (about 2ft deep). Hope it doesn't cause slab heave.

Cavity under water tank rough in. Plumbing was supposed to run beside the slab according to the plans but plumber went underneath after slab was laid. SS claims plumbing was laid before slab but we have photos of the pouring of the slab and there was was no plumbing there. We want to know if slab strength has been compromised by excavating underneath it as it has to hold a very heavy water tank.

Brick overhang from underneath.